Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)

When the German Minister for European Affairs was in Dublin he confirmed that the Government conspired with our so-called European partners to try to avoid a referendum and deny the people of this country the right to have a say on this treaty that will have such far-reaching effects. The Constitution has saved democracy and the right of citizens in this country to have a say despite the conspiring and manoeuvring with our so-called European partners. It says everything about the austerity agenda being pursued by Europe and the thrust of this treaty, which is just the latest instalment in the austerity agenda, that we have already seen two elected prime ministers deposed in order to ram through the policy of bailing out banks and inflicting austerity on the citizens of Europe, and that the Government then also conspired with our European partners to try to prevent a referendum in this country. However, thankfully, the Constitution has ensured that the people will have their say.

Therefore, we must discuss the substance of the treaty, which is very simple. It seeks to deny democratically elected governments the right to borrow, virtually at all. To deny that right at any time to invest in jobs, infrastructure, industrial development, and economic and social development is madness. It is anti-democratic and it is economically stupid, but to do it at a time of recession is crazy. The evidence is clear everywhere. It is not just the left that is saying this, mainstream and prominent economists across the world are saying that especially in times of recession one needs flexibility to be able to borrow to invest in the economy, to provide stimulus. The treaty denies us the right to do so.

The evidence of what the policy is resulting in is everywhere across Europe, most dramatically in Greece. Greece is in trouble, not because it resisted the austerity agenda - the people resisted it - but because the Greek Government capitulated to the austerity agenda and the result has been catastrophic for the people of Greece and for its economy, which has collapsed under the impact. Those same consequences are now becoming clear in this country with the downgrading of growth forecasts for this economy and now for the entire European economy. Austerity is suffocating our economy and the European economy and choking off any possibility of economic growth and development.

The supreme irony and hypocrisy of the treaty is that it tells us that, on the one hand, we cannot borrow to invest in jobs, nor in industrial, economic, social or infrastructural development and, on the other, we must borrow tens of billions of euro to pay off the gambling debts of casino banks and financial institutions. It is one law for the people, their futures and jobs and the prospect of economic growth and another for the banks and financial institutions. We must borrow at a desperate cost to the country to pay off the bankers and speculators but under no circumstances will we be allowed to borrow to fund job creation or economic and industrial development measures, which are precisely what we need to offer us a way out of the crisis.

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